Crazy Rich Asians' Director Breaks Down the Mansion Scene

Hey, what's going on?

I'm Jon M. Chu and this is Notes on a Scene

for my new film Crazy Rich Asians.

I think I've just fallen in love with you all over again.

(stately music)

Making this movie meant so much to me as a filmmaker

to go deal with the most personal thing in my life,

which is my cultural identity.

To do it on this scale with an all-Asian cast

for the first time in years

and the first time in a Hollywood movie

to have a romantic, contemporary, Asian-American couple,

means a lot to me

and to see the community come out and root for this movie,

and I think we have a great movie to root for,

has changed my whole life.

All right, so this scene is where Rachel,

she's pulling up to her boyfriend's house

which she's never been to, but what she doesn't know

is he's come from the richest family in Singapore,

so this is her first glimpse of his world.

(triumphal music)

Our movie takes place in Singapore.

We shot both in Malaysia and Singapore.

For this particular scene, a couple things here,

(laughs) right away.

This blonde wig, Awkwafina does not have this hair.

Originally Peik Lin was supposed to be a character

that changes looks every time she's in a scene,

we were supposed to have all these different looks,

but when she put on this blonde wig she looked so amazing

that she turned into the character, that we kept it.

She also is so into character

that she's not really looking like she's driving,

so we had to continue to remind her, Drive the car,

because this is all green screen back here

and we have lights flashing and stuff

to look like they're actually driving.

If you look at her wardrobe here,

she has these dogs on this pajama outfit,

which is actually super, super expensive, actually,

so don't be fooled by pajamas.

All right, so here they are driving up to Tyersall Park.

Oh, my God, it's beautiful.

Beautiful, it's 200 mil worth of real estate.

It's spectacular. (orchestral music)

In Singapore there's not a lot of room,

so to have this much space means they have a lot of money.

This shot in particular is almost all CG.

We needed a big entrance, almost a Gatsby entrance,

to this place and all of this water is all fake.

This is all fake, we created the little dock here,

this little bridge, this house we built in the space

but this is actually just using photographs to make it,

Singapore would be put in the background

because this is actually in Malaysia.

Then, as we keep going you'll see here,

so all these cars are CG, all these people are,

I mean, everything, 100%.

(smooth orchestral music)

All right, so we're pulling up to Tyersall Park.

This is actually in Malaysia.

We shot for about 43, 44 days on this movie

but in this property itself it was probably three days

and it rains every day for hours.

So you have to shoot, then let it rain,

and then go back to shooting,

but here we added these little Peranakan touches

to make the building look more like Kevin Kwan,

who's the writer, his house when he was growing up.

So all these little details were new.

This whole thing out here was just empty space,

so we added all the vegetation and flowers.

We really wanted this tropical, deco feel.

In Singapore, it has that humidity.

In the middle of the night it's 90-something degrees.

It's potent, you can feel it.

Originally these lanterns were white

and Michelle Yeoh came on the set,

and she's like, You cannot have white lanterns,

because they mean death, they're like at a funeral.

So we had to nix that and make them red.

If I had a red pen I would do that.

So those are all gels

and this house was actually abandoned

so it has a lot of, like, monkey poo everywhere.

I don't know how to draw a monkey,

but monkey poo everywhere and bats that flew everywhere.

So we cleared it out, made it really clean,

made it really beautiful

so that audiences would not know that it was a dump.

All right, so they're pulling up to Tyersall Park

and this is where our Nick Young,

our Asian male romantic lead, comes out.

This moment was very important to me,

to make sure that we highlight him and how dapper he is.

We've sort of known him as this dude from New York

so to see this go from the adventurer to the aristocrat

was really important for me, and this suit,

we did many different versions of this suit,

the double-breasted, all these different colors,

but the white one looked the best on him

and Henry Golding, he actually has never acted before,

and this is his first movie.

I found him through our accountant Lisa Kim,

our accountant in Malaysia saw him,

and so I then Instagram-stalked him

and found a mutual friend named Steve Chang.

Steve Chang connected us on Facebook,

and this is me over here,

and that's how we found this guy

and made him the cover

of every book and poster around town now.

Damn, Rachel, it's like the Asian Bachelor.

Thanks, man.

We really wanted Rachel Chu,

an Asian-American coming to Asia for the first time,

her point of view.

Of course, Henry Golding, his voice is just killer.

It's like butter. (romantic music)

Wow, I think

I've just fallen in love with you all over again.

This line was not scripted,

he said that just randomly on the day.

I thought it was a little cheesy,

but he delivers it so well.

We knew we wanted to show off her dress,

we hadn't seen what dress she was wearing,

so this served both purposes

of seeing how she dressed for the party

and having a great moment for their kiss.

This is actually a grass, this grass out here,

should be totally empty.

We built this giant building behind them.

This is where we're gonna have the flower later blossom

in the movie that you'll see

and so literally we built this whole place.

We actually had tropical birds everywhere,

but the birds were so loud that we just nixed them.

So they're somewhere in a cage somewhere,

hanging out, those birds.

This, this car here, it was sort of a normal color,

so we wrapped it in this sort of matte pink color.

So they kiss, a nice little push-in,

(Peik Lin clears throat) Rachel.

[Jon] And Peik Lin is still there.

(Peik Lin hisses) Rachel.

Oh, uh, this is my friend Peik Lin.

Awkwafina would riff all the time in these scenes.

She was so funny, we had to cut out

most of her lines because they were so dirty.

Thank you very much for bringing Rachel.

[Peik Lin] Oh, no worries.

Do you wanna stop by for some dinner?

Oh, no, I couldn't impose.

[Nick] No, it's not a problem.

You know, I had some dinner plans--

[Nick] Seriously, we've got a lot of--

Yeah, I can come to dinner.

So, Awkwafina's hilarious and one of my favorite gags

that she does is this walk.

She literally does this funny walk in these giant heels

in this elegant, beautiful place.

Yeah. Did you?

Yes. How was your day?

Fun, I got to meet her family--

And then this whole joke, all of these things,

actually on the day, this was like four in the morning

shooting this, and every label, you couldn't read.

So these are all actually CG labels,

if you can believe it or not,

if I can keep up with that.

All right, so this shot is the last shot of the night.

They were kicking us off of the property

and I did not have this shot of her,

I did not have her response, and it's a great line.

You have a cocktail dress in your trunk?

I'm not an animal, Rachel.

We had cut it and then everyone loved it so much

we put it back in, so Awkwafina's delivery

of I'm not an animal, not an animal, Rachel

was really important and we didn't have the shot.

So my producer's literally yelling at me.

I was like, Fine, then we're not gonna have the,

we're gonna have to come back and do this the next day,

there's no time left tonight.

So you'd better be ready to spend more money tomorrow.

He went silent and then we just shot.

I think we did this one take twice in a row

and Awkwafina always kills it, always kills it.

That's the muscle sign, always kills it,

and, yeah, that's how we got Crazy Rich Asians.